At every turn in November, we shall bump into the giants of rugby. But it's not just on the outsized scale in old Europe that rugby is on the move. On two tiny dots far away, Hong Kong and Little Hong Kong, the game in Asia is stirring.

In the headquarters of HSBC in the first Hong Kong, a forum was held on the development of rugby in the world's largest continent, where nearly two-thirds of the human population live. John Kirwan, ex-All Black winger and now coach of Japan, gave an idea of the scale of things. For example, more people pass through Tokyo's Shinjuku station every week, give or take the odd hundred thousand, than live in New Zealand and Australia combined.

It just so happened that the next day, the rugby teams of those same under-populated countries pitched up at Hong Kong Stadium to play each other for the first time beyond their national boundaries, outside the World Cup. It was all very ground-breaking, even if the cultural breakthrough didn't match the excitement beforehand over how many million dollars (Aussie, Kiwi or Hong Kong; choose your currency) the three parties concerned (swap dollar denominations for Rugby Unions) would be making out of the enterprise.

The sense of good business all-round was slightly spoilt afterwards by the criticism from Australia's CEO John O'Neil of the game's Irish referee, Alan Lewis. It made a novel experience taste like too many Tests the world over: play the game, count the money and curse the ref. This was more jaundiced Europe than Asian freshness.

Not so in Little Hong Kong, a nickname for Sandakan, after the Cantonese workers who once went there for work, near the northern tip of Borneo. The town is in the state of Sabah, one of two (Sarawak being the other) belonging to Malaysia on the world's third largest island.

Sandakan faces the Sulu Sea and used to be the capital of British North Borneo, but it fell to the Japanese in 1942. After the Allies bombed it and the occupiers destroyed what was left, it was more or less wiped off the map by 1945, living on only as a place-name in an atrocity: the Sandakan Death Marches.

As the Japanese retreated into the Bornean interior, they used 1,800 Australian and 600 British prisoners of war, plus an estimated 3,600 locals, as slave porters and force-marched them from Sandakan to Ranau. Of those that set out, only six - a mere half-dozen Australians who escaped into the rainforest - survived. At Memorial Park in Sandakan and at the war memorial in Kundasang, not far from Ranau, there is a chill that cuts through the equatorial heat. The numbers game can work against Japan, as well for it.

Sandakan has picked itself up, even if the inhabitants of the water villages of Sim-Sim on the outskirts would find themselves in the relegation zone of the world's rich list. There is eco-tourism on offer, proboscis monkeys and crocodiles, and the star acts, the orang-utans of Sepilok Reserve, where orphaned apes put on a show-stopping turn in a natural habitat.

This is also a modern rugby town, the Limerick of the Tropics. Right now, it is hosting its eighth Borneo 10-a-side tournament at the brand new Sandakan Rugby Club. Competing teams include the Penguins, an itinerant bunch who claim to be the most travelled rugby tourists in the blurry history of rugby touring.

They also run a peripatetic academy and last week, as the other teams, including the hosts and defending champions, the Borneo Eagles - Sabahns fortified by a few professional Fijians - prepared to chase the prize money, the Penguins spent two days with hundreds of children, some new to the game, some part of an ongoing structured programme.

This needs money, which is where the same bank as in bigger Hong Kong comes in handy, plus the quite fanatical backing of the Tan brothers, of whom there are five, led in Sandakan by Vela Tan, president of the Sabah Rugby Union. He also happens to run the plantation arm of the IJM Group, which means he grows oil palm trees and extracts the oil from their fruit.

Palm oil production is an issue, what with deforestation and industrialisation - tanker lorries grind endlessly up and down the lumpy, bumpy highway between Sandakan and the state capital of Kota Kinabalu - but the Tans would appear to bring to eco-sustainability an equal level of commitment. Vela promotes protection of threatened oxbow lakes and bio-composting of the waste pulp from the oil extraction process with the same energy he puts into the guided tour of his clubhouse.

And he's not done yet. There are plans and more plans, mostly involving the wiry children outside, being lifted high into the air by giant Penguins. He is completely hooked on the notion of the rugby club as the kernel of a community and, when it comes to the potential of kernels, Veal Tan is an expert.

The road to emergence for Malaysia, and even for Kirwan's Japan, as a 15-a-side force is desperately long, but rugby sevens is the fast track. A lot depends on the outcome of the mission to have sevens adopted at the Olympics, but from the forum in one Hong Kong to the future format in another - this is the last year of the Sandakan 10s before sevens take over - the message from Asia is clear. Tiny dots may be seeds from which great things grow on the world's largest continent.